HE has lengthy been one of many Costas most feared ‘businessmen’.
A former Manchester doorman, Johnny Morrissey, 62, was this week led out of his personal entrance door in handcuffs.
The infamous boss of Nero Vodka, John Francis Morrissey – nicknamed Johnny Money – is accused of laundering €200 million in an enormous blow in opposition to the Kinahan medicine cartel.
The expat of 20 years is claimed to be the enforcer of the Irish crime clan, which has terrorised the Costa del Sol for the final twenty years, with quite a few shootings and settling of scores.
Morrissey, who commonly splashed the money in a sequence of shiny, double web page spreads in his favorite weekly newspaper, was arrested in one among his Mijas flats.
Alongside his spouse Nicola, 47, he was snared in a large Europol police operation that concerned officers from 5 completely different nations.
With a helicopter buzzing round overhead, the Rochdale hardman was ignominiously cuffed in a pair of tight Hawaiian shorts, his beer intestine protruding above.
A video confirmed police flip over one among his numerous Costa properties (police have to this point searched 11 in whole) whereas his enticing spouse caught up a finger at a photographer as she was led to a police automobile.
The 4 minute movie confirmed passports, watches and different documentation being laid out on a mattress as he sat subsequent to a bottle of his vodka – which police declare he used to launder his money.
Later within the footage, a machete is discovered hidden beneath a mattress.
It was solely a matter of time earlier than the pair had been lastly pulled in, with Morrissey being flagged by the US Treasury and Medicine Enforcement Company in April.
He was named, together with 5 different males, as being a key ‘enforcer’ and suspect within the facilitating and financing of the prison actions of the Kinahans who management large elements of the UK cocaine commerce.
The operation concerned brokers from the British NCA, Irish GARDA, America’s DEA, Dutch Politei and Europol’s European Centre for Monetary and Financial Crime.
The Guardia Civil later confirmed that Morrissey was on the head of the ‘most essential’ worldwide prison organisation working in Spain devoted to cash laundering.
In little greater than a yr and a half Morrisey is believed to have laundered greater than €200million (round €350,000 a day).
The cash was transferred utilizing the ‘Hawala’ underground banking system, a casual methodology of transferring cash with none bodily cash truly transferring.
A Europol press launch defined: “Based mostly in Spain, the primary suspect and his associates had been answerable for gathering giant quantities of money from prison organisations which they might ship to different prison organisations in different nations.”
The investigation, carried out by the Guardia Civil’s Organised Crime Workforce, based mostly in Malaga, and coordinated internationally by the Technical Unit of the Judicial Police (UTPJ), started with a sequence of drug seizures in early 2021.
Within the raids, which weren’t introduced to the media, over 200 kilograms of cocaine and round €500,000 in money had been seized from hidden compartments in automobiles round Malaga province.
In a police video launched immediately detectives are seen opening up a sequence of hidden compartments in autos in a ‘automobile pound’ believed to be in Mijas.
A well-known native automobile seller was arrested on the scene, whereas others had been seen mendacity on the bottom.
Morrissey and his spouse Nicola led a excessive profile life selling the Nero vodka model on the Costa del Sol and mixing with fashions and celebrities in addition to excessive profile members of Marbella society.
He portrayed himself as a profitable businessman and stuffed his social media profile with images at eating places, seashores and events, virtually at all times accompanied by Nicola.
To raised unfold the message he took out frequent spreads in Fuengirola-based newspaper Euro Weekly Information, proclaiming the success of the model at a sequence of glamorous occasions.
He lived in a mansion and was constructing a two-storey magnificence and wellness clinic in Mijas Costa embellished with lavish bronze sculptures within the form of deer, centaurs and flamingos.
But, Eire-born Morrissey was raised in Rochdale and spent a lot of his youth incomes a fearsome popularity in Manchester earlier than transferring to Eire and later Marbella.
Issues got here unstuck when he needed to flee Eire greater than 20 years in the past after reportedly being concerned in an try to harm a Prison Property Bureau (CAB) officer investigating him.
Former CAB officer Felix McKenna earlier this yr linked him to the try to assault a distinguished Bureau officer earlier than he left Eire having had greater than €600,000 price of money and property seized.
Morrissey was quickly dwelling in Marbella and have become a bigger than life character, identified for his hyperlinks to the underworld, but additionally celebrities.
He was a pal of the late Freddie Starr, who used to look in a nightclub allegedly owned by Morrissey in Fuengirola.
He’s additionally suspected of bankrolling the ultimate days of infamous timeshare scammer Toni Muldoon who died in 2019.
Muldoon was jailed for seven and a half years for ripping off bizarre individuals to the tune of tens of thousands and thousands through the years.
The convicted fraudster arrange male relationship websites across the UK, in addition to a timeshare-type rip-off that snared €6.6 million. On his launch from jail he led a low profile life allegedly financed by ‘outdated pal’ Morrissey.
Chatting with the Olive Press, a Guardia Civil officer defined how suspicions had been raised about Morrissey and his spouse Nicola final yr.
Whereas she was the proprietor on paper, based mostly out of the Elviria Enterprise Centre, he acted because the ‘ambassador’ for the corporate, with connections to Gibraltar and Glasgow.
The officer revealed this afternoon: “He and his spouse had been spending some huge cash across the Costa del Sol, however their vodka firm didn’t make a variety of revenue.
“Regardless of this, the model was at all times sponsoring huge occasions in Marbella.
“The vodka model launched within the UK, however when the US Treasury Division uncovered it as being linked to the Kinahans, they closed the corporate and moved it to Spain and Gibraltar.”
He added: “Within the UK media they’re saying that this man dedicated 38 murders, however the Guardia Civil will not be conscious of any of those.
“What I can affirm is that he used to reside in a really unique mansion in Marbella, however when the US Treasury linked him to the Kinahans, he moved to a small condo in Mijas. That’s the place we picked him up.”
A Europol spokesman mentioned that Morrissey and his associates had been answerable for gathering giant quantities of money from drug gangs, which they might then ‘ship’ to different prison teams throughout Europe and the UK.
One other suspect who ran a automobile dealership was arrested in Manchester.
Morrissey was remanded in custody at a listening to in Malaga on Wednesday.
Two different suspects – a person and a lady – had been additionally in courtroom in Spain on Wednesday.
The person was additionally remanded in custody whereas the girl was launched on bail.
He was allegedly answerable for offering autos to the gang through which he had constructed hid compartments to move the big quantities of money and medicines undetected.
The US Treasury Division blacklisted Morrissey final April and introduced a $5 million reward for any citizen providing info on the whereabouts of the three leaders of his organisation: Christopher Vincent Kinahan, and his sons Daniel Joseph Kinahan and Christopher Vincent Kinahan Jr. The trio are identified to have moved to Dubai.
Based on the USA, Morrissey held a key place on the second rung of the clan’s management construction.
The US Treasury Division reported that his position consisted of “materially aiding, sponsoring, or offering monetary, materials, or technological assist, or items or providers to assist the Kinahans’ prison organisation, together with as a hitman and dealer of worldwide drug shipments from South America”.
Proprietor of the Euro Weekly Information Michel Euesden admitted to Sunday World in Eire, she had helped the Morrisseys market Nero Vodka and even secured Nicola a gathering with Spanish division retailer El Corte Ingles, the place the model was later stocked.
She insisted she by no means received paid by the Morrisseys and so they disbursed of her providers as they pushed into the UK. “Each month on my books that debt continues to be there. They by no means paid me,” she mentioned.
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